ACG and Military

Military affairs always form one of the topics at the center of human discussion and entertainment. ACG indutry striving to create a virtual world with animations, comics and games certainly will not shun this interesting topic. The World War II itself is a historical legacy usually excavated by artists and designers to produce their own stories and naval warfare has insipred a lot of ACG companies to create different kinds of intellectual properties, in which Space Battleship Yamato, Red Alert, World of Warships and Pacific Theater of Operations.

Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was one of the most powerful naval forces in World War II. At the beginning of the Pacific War, they did a huge damage upon United States Navy in the Raid of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Even though the Japanese Empire was finally defeated by the Allied Forces in 1945, the history from 1868 to 1945 when Japan rose from an underdeveloped agricultural country to a modernized powerful state is still a very important resource for ACG production today. The first influential animation taking IJN ships as a theme is science fiction series Space Battleship Yamato aired from 1974. Yamato as the most powerful battleship of Japan in World War II, even though sunk quickly by warplanes from American aircraft carriers in Operation Ten-Go, remains a symbol of Japanese honor in the past. As TV animation series Space Battleship Yamato got popular in the world from the 1980s, some western media entertainment project also took Battleship Yamato as an important material. For example, American game company Blizzard employed Yamato as the prototype for the Battle Cruiser in its celebrated strategic game Star Craft issued in 1998.